WOMEN AND RESOURCES OF THE NORTHWEST COAST: DOCUMENTATION FROM THE 18TH AND EARLY 19TH CENTURIES (CULTURAL, ECOLOGY)

This dissertation combines available ethnohistoric material on the role of women with environmental data on the natural resources of the Northwest Coast to explore and redefine the important economic activities of Coastal women in the indigenous foraging adaptation. An evolutionary model positing women's extensive domestic responsibilities as determinant in directing the economic strategies of, particularly, foraging systems is suggested as the most appropriate intellectual frame for explication of Coastal data since it allows discussion of women's activities without demanding comparison with those of their male counterparts.; Native cultures of the Northwest Coast have been subject to the influences of Western introductions and ideology for approximately 200 years. During that time the historical events of the Coast have been largely determined, written and interpreted by non-Native agents. Predispositions brought to the descriptive data on Coastal societies has meant a failure to integrate available information on the relevance of women's roles and their strategies of resource use into the overall picture of Coastal economic systems. Some attention is given in this study to probable causes for the underreporting of women's activities as well as to the scope of resources essential to the indigenous lifeway. Major Coastal resources are described and characterized according to their environmental distribution and relevance to Coast economic systems.; Primary documents of the Coast are examined for the earliest descriptions of the economic activities of Coastal women operating under conditions relatively unaffected by the multiple introductions of the West. Strategies of resource maintenance and use employed by Coastal women in fulfilling their extensive obligations are discussed as well as situations demonstrating women's attendant rights and aggressive or manipulative responses to the exigencies of the contact period. The importance of women's production of surplus foods to the support of the early Western mariners and colonists is documented. Contrasts and similarities in historical circumstance and reporting are noted for women of the southern and northern regions of the Coast.